


let it rest

by stag_von_simp



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Death, Regrets, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Sylvain Was Recruited In Crimson Flower, Sylvain Week 2020, Yeah this is a rough one, contemplating, post crimson flower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:20:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23058376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stag_von_simp/pseuds/stag_von_simp
Summary: It just so happens that, behind the mask and the blade-carved, blood-bright smile, Sylvain stumbles beneath a thousand regrets.Or: even a year after Edelgard (and, by extension, Sylvain) have won the war, Sylvain can't quite come to terms with the deaths of Dimitri and Felix.  Many evenings are not kind to him - this is just one.(my lone contribution to sylvain week, prompts used were "regret" and "rest")
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault & Sylvain Jose Gautier, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	let it rest

**Author's Note:**

> again, restating the tags just in case: trigger warning for intense self hatred, suicidal thoughts, and mentions of death.
> 
> i'm too soft for angst like this, guys, but...i opened the google doc and it just? appeared?
> 
> sorry in advance if it hurts!!
> 
> (another apology: i'm sorry, but ingrid is never mentioned :(( that was not on purpose - in fact, i didn't even realize it until i finished!! she means the world to sylvain too, never fear!!)

It just so happens that, behind the mask and the blade-carved, blood-bright smile, Sylvain stumbles beneath a thousand regrets.

He’s twenty-five and he misses his best friends, and he can already feel the gray streaks shooting through the fire of his hair, he can already feel his stomach dwindling. It will be numb as the rest of him in a few short years, he’d wager, if his betrayal had left him with a penny to push across the bar counter in a bet.

Sylvain perches on his stool as if he’s steeling himself to pounce. He’s sure the bartender of what could only be described with an affectionate sneer as a  _ dump  _ notices the way his muscles brace beneath his skin, ready for him to hurl down his glass or shred his skin; in fact, rearing to do it, rearing to color himself with blood and chaos just to scold some color into his empty husk for once.

Tossing his head back, he fights down another mouthful of his drink. The ale pools on his tongue like contained flames, and spears down his throat like those flames waved into a catastrophe. His eyes prickle, itching as that taste infests his senses.

“Hey, man, you’ve been workin’ on the same drink for nearly an hour,” the bartender shears through his reverie, and Sylvain dunks his head back down, fingers battering the table. His fingernails, nipped down to split cuticles, hardly make a sound against the wood.

_ Fitting.  _ He snorts into his drink. “So?”

“So it must be getting nasty,” the other man infers. “Don’t you want another?”

“It was nasty to begin with. I’m fine. I’d have to steal one to get my hands on another.”

“Sure, whatever, Margrave Gautier,” snarks the man on the other side of the table, which juts between them like a barrier or a mountain - or, of course, a set of ideals you were so infatuated with you’d let them ravage your life, kill your greatest friend, drain the love of your life of any will to live before you could even  _ get a word out past the swell of your ego in your throat, always, like a dam of tears cutting off a reservoir of feelings you couldn’t even understand _ . The other man is the one boxed in, but Sylvain feels his own back brushing the wall, feels the threat of a life in captivity prowling towards him instead. Sylvain is the prisoner.

He will always be the prisoner, with all these regrets and hypotheticals and if-you-had-just-been-a-little-bit-betters looming above him like bars, and tracking his steps like a weight tethered to his ankle, creaking forever in his wake.

“Margrave Gautier, huh? You couldn’t be more off base, sir.”

“I’m not stupid,” the bartender - older, with a thorn bush of hair hugging the base of his skull, though his forehead is bare, gleaming in the dim lights dangling above the two, the only two in this slumped, sad establishment tonight. “I know my way around the noble scene in this rotten country. That vibrant hair is the same as your father’s, though his shave was more practical, to say the least. He always joked about your Crest being your saving grace or something.” The bartender hacks a laugh. “He came around here a few times.”

“When?” The question spurts out before Sylvain can plug it back - and he would have plugged it back. He really doesn’t want to care about his father’s affairs.

“Whenever he had business near the border between what used to be Faerghus and the Empire. Of course, I’ve been here, scrubbing glasses and eroding for decades. Your father’s one of the only guys who ever made an impression on me. Always braggin’ about something, that man.”

“Heh. True.” Sylvain’s eyes flick up to the bartender’s. “I regret being his blood, so I left. Yup. My Crest’s all I’ve got these days - and he was right, for once, about something. It really is all I’ve ever had going for me.”

The bartender laughs again, a sound like smoke put to a tune, charred at the edges, old and tired and brimming with remorse. “Well, at least it’s something. Uh, want a refill?”

Sylvain contemplates, scrunching his face - before launching his cup, still stained at the bottom by remnants of the ale he couldn’t swallow, to the floor. As it splinters, deafening, blown to pieces by the impact, Sylvain shudders with memories of steel, not glass, and long nights smuggling alcohol into the stonehenge walls of the Monastery, and yanking that musty air into his lungs like he was sipping poison, and dying a million times, his limbs interlaced with a beautiful pair of female limbs, bodies wound into a tapestry of disappointment, memories to strike aflame, and knowing each one would become a separate monster in the back of his mind on evenings like this. Evenings where he knows he’d wheel his way back into the past just to keep from bleeding for what he really, truly believed in.

He could have stayed with Dimitri, and  _ Fe.  _ He could have been their crutch, their cracked pillar -  _ he could never be whole  _ \- whatever they needed. He could have suffered forever with his foot lodged in his mouth, and they would have survived.

Maybe he would still be here, gagging down his woes and tainting his tongue with this stale sourness of beer, but at least he’d have Dimitri and Felix hunched on either side of him, nursing their own drinks. They could laugh together, mocking their past mistakes harmlessly. 

At least that would give him a reason to pretend.

(That would give him a reason to live.)

“That wasn’t necessary,” the bartender grunts. “You didn’t have to break my cup, you could've just politely said no thanks. But hey, that’s one less glass to polish at the end of the day. So why’d you join that Emperor bitch’s cause, huh?”

“Don’t call her that,” Sylvain sighs. “Please. I don’t want to shatter you like I did that glass, sir. She’s softer than she seems - like everyone. She’s easier to break behind her fire. Just like you. I think it’s time to get home.”

He boosts himself to his feet, shoving off the dilapidated bar before him because if he doesn’t, he’ll fall, he’ll crumple, he’ll melt like wax on fire, he’ll be crushed like he was something softer than himself, crunched ruthlessly between fingers, because fingers can only cause harm and  _ every little thing is torture  _ and what is he saying anymore?  _ What is he saying anymore? _

The door tingles with a bell as he slams it behind him. He trudges, having forgotten to bring a horse to carry him home. The cold lashes against his bare face, pouring his hair into his eyes, washing the youth from his face, if any at all remained.

He has so many regrets.

He doesn’t know how long he’s walking, trampling the landscape and scarring it with his footprints. Apparently, he can’t help it - he’s always hurting someone.

When he’s next aware of himself, Dorothea is floating into his vision, brown curls shrouding around her face like a fog he wants to drown in until he can’t see and can’t feel. “Sylvain? What...What exactly are you doing here?”

_ Dammit.  _ He came to the wrong house.

The ale - still glossing his mouth - is doing its job as aptly as he’d hoped it would. His vision is musked with it; if he walks on, he’ll stumble and slide to his knees, and then he’d have no choice but to knot his fingers and pray, right? 

Sylvain only realizes now that he’s shaking, tremors worming into every bit of every bone until his entire being rattles with his shallow breaths. His strength flickers out, and he tells her the truth, for what might be the first time in his life:

“I-I guess I went to the wrong house.” His voice falters, and he hates it as much as he hates the Crest burning his flesh inch by inch and he hates it nearly as much as he hates himself.

Dorothea’s lips slip into a frown. “Something’s wrong. What’s wrong?”

Sylvain’s eyes, wiped of vision, collapse to his feet.

“Dorothea, I...I don’t think I can be alone tonight.”

“Oh. I see. Come in then.”

He has to whisper to keep from sobbing his words. “I don’t think I can move my feet.”

Dorothea dashes away a giggle with a hand pressed to her lips. “Sure you can. You walked all the way here just fine.”

Sylvain can’t summon a word, so he just stands there, scraping barren fingertips against his left wrist. 

He feels his eyelids wilting over his eyes--

And succumbs, so easily, to the pressure.

The ground beneath him swings into motion all at once, and Dorothea surges forward to catch him, and Sylvain is awake again, too awake,  _ let me rest, let me rest. _

“Wow, Sylvain. You fell asleep standing up, huh? Weird.” Just enough urgency edges into Dorothea’s voice to scare Sylvain. “Seriously. What’s going on with you?”

It all surges out of Sylvain, bitter, honest and stinging, metallic and terrible. “Dorothea, I can’t remember if I drank too much or too little, and I don’t...I can’t...I think I might have…”

Dorothea dabs a finger to his lips. “Listen, Sylvain,” she says, voice a calming breeze, but it only makes him feel colder, “I know what this is about. I just didn’t know you’d gotten so bad...but you have to remember the war ended nearly a year ago. Dimitri has been dead for a year--” Sylvain accidentally squeaks a noise between a whimper and a yelp, and his chest smolders with a physical ache - Dorothea is wrenching his shoulders - and he’s dissolving against her, he’s crying until he can’t breathe, he’s hurting so bad.

Dorothea’s lips find his ear, fluttering, her breath a furnace that can’t kiss the cold away once it has locked around his bones, and it has. “Sylvain, please, you have to face it. He’s dead, and it’s not your fault. Felix is dead, and it’s not your fault. You still love them, right?”

“To hell and back,” Sylvain finds the guts to tell her.

“Then hold that close, okay? People die. It’s unpreventable. But you have to  _ let it rest _ , my dear. You can’t bring them back by setting yourself on fire a million times. You can’t do anything but go on loving them. So let it rest.  _ Let them rest _ .”

There’s a hitch in her voice, a hoarseness of hinges left alone for years - she might be crying, too. So Sylvain tucks the base of her head into his hand, lets his thumb flow through her hair, and tries to counsel his lungs into settling. 

Instead of succeeding, he sobs for what feels like hours but might be mere minutes. Either way, it’s too long - he’s not the dead one. He hasn’t earned the right to weep.

He doesn’t love Dorothea, not the way he loved Felix - his mouth doesn’t dribble with the idea of her skin scratching his, he doesn’t want her to riddle him silly with a thousand scars, he doesn’t want her to bury her fingers in his hair or her teeth in his neck, he doesn’t want her to capture his mind and hold him captive with as much merciless love for the job as she could find - but he loves her for being here. He loves her for letting him rest with her.

He will love her, even as he hates himself.

(And it’s undeniable that he will hate himself  _ forever. _ )

But at least he won’t pull through life loveless.


End file.
